A Perfect Day - Final Waveform

Broadcast event, Friday, February 22, 8 pm, at Unit/Pitt Projects, 15 East Pender Street, Vancouver BC

The second project in Unit/Pitt’s What Future series of commissioned works is A Perfect Day by Susanna Browne. On Friday, February 22, join us for the launch of the project and its accompanying publication.

The song A Perfect Day was composed by American songwriter Carrie Jacobs-Bond in 1910, becoming one of the most popular English-language parlour songs of the early 20th century. Susanna Browne has recorded a new version of this song, which is being broadcast into deep space, and which will also be broadcast from Unit/Pitt on low-power radio for the next few weeks (on 89.7 FM, in the 0-block of East Pender Street).

Exemplifying the inherent sentimentality and melancholy of the Victorian era, A Perfect Day describes the bittersweet feelings one experiences at the end of something wonderful, perfect. Jacobs-Bond’s work, well known during her lifetime, in the last century has disappeared, and though her music often focused on the upbeat, her life was anything but. Illness, unemployment, and a number of premature deaths in the family plagued Jacobs-Bond’s life, the most curious being that of her only son, who, in 1932, on a trip to Lake Arrowhead, California, committed suicide. He was found in a room with A Perfect Day playing on the phonograph, his body surrounded by burning candles.

Our website says the piece runs from this Friday until the end of April. In one sense, that’s completely accurate, as we will be playing the audio from this work on our low-power broadcast for that entire time; in another sense, A Perfect Day is going to go on much longer, until the signal sent off into deep space from a satellite transmission facility becomes faint and undetectable, far away and far in the future.

[audio: https://www.unitpitt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Perfect-Day-Final.mp3|loop=no|titles=A Perfect Day, Susanna Browne – composer, Carrie Jacobs-Bond]

Susanna Browne is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art & Design in 2010.

The What Future series is supported by a grant from the Vancouver Foundation.

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